An Eye on the Deadeye

Comments

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

Nonsense.
This is all about how the profession feels. This random malice reset on your marked target is stupid as heck.
If my target is alive and marked for death, the malice should stay. And not forcing me to tumble around like a drunk after a night in the pubs.

And "to lack a little"? With the permanent reset of malice and removal of these?
As a Rifle Deadeye all day (and before I used Dual Pistols before it was en vogue), I think I am more skilled just by that than the average player that cheese their way trough the game in zergs and with boons and people to help. The old Deadeye helped to play the solo'ist playstyle and survival, now it's just button mashing garbage.

The old DD system was passive, bland, easy to use. Tag a target, wait or fire a little while waiting for max malice, then spam DJ ad nauseum.

@Specialka.7290 said:
The old DD system was passive, bland, easy to use. Tag a target, wait or fire a little while waiting for max malice, then spam DJ ad nauseum.

DD feels far better now than it is far more dynamic to play.

Add the few tweaks I proposed and it will be fine.

Adapt or die.

It made perfect sense and it was NOT passive, since you could decide to either be immobile and "quiet" and gain slow malice which increased the time window for your enemy that is informed about that he is being marked all the time - or you put hands on it and attacked your target, increasing malice, but leaving you with either less initiative or no at all, so you could not profit from Malice in DJ, but a light boost on other skills.

Dynamic = Button mashing. A sniper profession is not supposed to be "dynamic", and with "dynamic" you mean to either switch weapons or to be pidgehonholed into a weaeponset. Wow, very dynamic by taking away choices. Or, of course, you like to use daggers on a Deadeye as main weapon and just switch to Rifle to dodge roll into stealth use your glorified auto attack and getting your malice reset. GJ, that's fun and makes totally sense design-wise! (/s)

Your tweaks won't be fine because the entire malice is busted right now. DJ is a glorified auto attack that feels so detached. How am I even supposed to dodge roll on a ledge - where I used to snipe down from?!

People like you seem to force your Core/Daredevil/Niche gameplay into Deadeye and are now happy. Of course you do not mind the entire profession being turned around by 180°, the images, the videos, the promotions, heck even the description on the website do not match anymore. Nobody could be fine with that.

Adapt or die? If the game company wants people to "die" and not playing their game anymore, they pretty much failed at what they were doing.
So that argument is just as invalid.

And yes, before the patch, it was passive. Mark a target, wait to gain malice (since you needed to do nothing to gain it), fire away. How do you call that?

And it is not the first time a video game company does an overhaul of game mecanics that does not please ppl. And overall, it is always the discontent that have a loud voice, especially on forum. That is why you should take into account what you can see on these boards.

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

This is all i want to say. new malice system is FAR BETTER THAN the previous one .

@Specialka.7290 said:
And yes, before the patch, it was passive. Mark a target, wait to gain malice (since you needed to do nothing to gain it), fire away. How do you call that?

it was partially passive before the rework. while you can mark something and wait for it, attacking the marked target with anything (even autos) will make malice generate faster. so if anything you still had some control over malice generation with the older system.

I do know that, I played with DD before and after the patch. Overall, the Rifle DD was passive. Build up malice with time (little speeding up the process with attacking), then spam Dj all the way to the death of your target. Very engaging gameplay.

The problem for me is that the new "dynamic" rifle DE is like a smaller and weaker version of P/P unload thief, and I think we don't need two of them (again no offence against P/P thiefs, everyone should play his role). But with this changes you take away the choice between the silent sniper and the dynamic P/P thief because there is only one left; the "dynamic" unload/round burst spammer.
Beside this I still have no idea why they had to change the rifle skills? This has nothing to do with dynamic ot not dynamic, the new smoke wall is everything else than dynamic...

And adapt or die has always two sides: If the game isn't able to adapt to a big part of the playerbase (or at least to the base of a specific specialisation), it will die either.
If the DE players decide to leave GW 2 because of the patch, that won't hurt the game that much because there are several other classes and their players. But if ANet lets die the DE playerbase and doesn't care about the complains at all, other classes will follow in other patches for sure. It's normal that they can't always deliver the perfect game at the first try, but then even more it's important to listen to the playerbase. Of course you can't care about every single opinion but I think this thread shows that this patch does not bother only a small part of the rifle DE players. And then it's maybe time to accept not all changes were that good (especially the mess with the rifle skills -.-).

It's all about how ANet will deal with the criticism - just ignore it or try to find a solution for everyone. But I'm still hoping because I liked the game a lot over the last years.

@Specialka.7290 said:
I do know that, I played with DD before and after the patch. Overall, the Rifle DD was passive. Build up malice with time (little speeding up the process with attacking), then spam Dj all the way to the death of your target. Very engaging gameplay.

sniper archetype gameplay though was rarely ever engaging especially in FPS games unless you are met with a counter-sniper trading shots with you from far away. usually as a sniper you just sit and hit from afar rarely ever moving or only moving if you've been discovered. snipers dont roll left and right before hitting their targets unless the enemies are closing in really fast (which you already do with the previous DE to avoid mechanics sometimes you even had to cancel kneel to reposition far away if the boss got too close so it'll aggro someone else) so yeah to me the old DE gameplay, despite having a mind numbing 2 button sustain rotation (spamming 1 then hitting 4 once you get enough INI for a DJ - and yes we didn't spam 4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4 like what some people imply), was fine because i chose to play a sniper and not rambo doing 3 or 2 round bursts dodging left and right.

@Specialka.7290 said:
The new smoke wall is imo for pvp, so ppl can either close the distance so you can shoot them all the way to melee or flee.

Btw, players that comes to forums are like 5% of the playerbase (maybe even less).

I play more pvp than pve and can see no reason for this smoke screen; if you get attacked from range you dodge and go to stealth (-> much more dynamic).

Yes that's right of course, I don't want and can't speak for all the players out there but ratio of players which don't like the patch and the ones who really like it (rifle DE) should be more or less representative I think. And there are many people who wrote normally they just accept the nerfs but not this time because the changes are so bad. I think this should tell us something...

@Specialka.7290 said:
I do know that, I played with DD before and after the patch. Overall, the Rifle DD was passive. Build up malice with time (little speeding up the process with attacking), then spam Dj all the way to the death of your target. Very engaging gameplay.

Yeeeeah... Like small, 2 times faster rate of gianing it and with proper trait you had option to even speed this more: mark->kneel (stelath)->attack (bonus malice from stealth attack)->shadow melt to reset revealed->another stealth attack for malice gain... Like no controll at all, totally passive (like me being "passive aggresive" with this post).

@Specialka.7290 said:
I do know that, I played with DD before and after the patch. Overall, the Rifle DD was passive. Build up malice with time (little speeding up the process with attacking), then spam Dj all the way to the death of your target. Very engaging gameplay.

Yeeeeah... Like small, 2 times faster rate of gianing it and with proper trait you had option to even speed this more: mark->kneel (stelath)->attack (bonus malice from stealth attack)->shadow melt to reset revealed->another stealth attack for malice gain... Like no controll at all, totally passive (like me being "passive aggresive" with this post).

Well, that means you have no issue with current malice system then, great

I don't think the 39,8 K views of this thread come from all the happy rifle DEs out there. And since GW 2 is (more or less) free to play, most players don't really care about the patch and just change to another game if they don't like it anymore.

@Specialka.7290 said:
I do know that, I played with DD before and after the patch. Overall, the Rifle DD was passive. Build up malice with time (little speeding up the process with attacking), then spam Dj all the way to the death of your target. Very engaging gameplay.

Yeeeeah... Like small, 2 times faster rate of gianing it and with proper trait you had option to even speed this more: mark->kneel (stelath)->attack (bonus malice from stealth attack)->shadow melt to reset revealed->another stealth attack for malice gain... Like no controll at all, totally passive (like me being "passive aggresive" with this post).

Well, that means you have no issue with current malice system then, great

Haha ha... To be honest - at this moment I can only say no. They introduced an interesting idea, I have to admit at least that, but at the moment it is too complicated and at the same moment too braindead to play as rifle deadeye at least comparing it to other classes. The more interesting and engaging style that should usually bring more dps (doing sth harder - dps rotation here - provides better rewards) is clunky, subpar to previous one (not even mentioning other power based dps classes), unreliable (bugs and minor QoL improvements would be nice) and drains too much of resources, that it literally kills usage of DJ in almost any pve enocounter/type. When I tested max output of DJ build on golem (special forces training area) I could get sth roughly around 12/13k dps as a solo character (no foodbuffs at the moment of tests and I go by zerk/valkyria mix that gives me around 100% crit chance while kneeling). And it was the best I could get after checking few possible trait combinations. What was funny is that I belive with full buffs existing in game my dps rose to breathtaking (sth around) 15k dps? Maybe if I tried something more I could squeeze few hundreds more dps, maybe even 1 or 2k more, but I got totally heartbroken by results that I had to stop so I can cool down.
Then I went braindead'y build focused around TRB... With full buffs I got sth around 23k dps (remember, no food, mixed set, also bloodloust sigil not stacked, could get sth better for more dps), there are ppl that say they can get up to 26k. No use of malice whatsoever (new DJ) with changing build slightly made my dps much better, but still subpar with possibilities that gave the previous one (even with non meta build I could get more and with meta build old rifle could get to sth around 31k dps?). Still people doing raids says that standard is 34k+ at least for power based dps classes.
Sooo, to be honest, I don't know if even granting twice the bonus (not 20% but 40% per malice for DJ) would bring DJ centered build to compete (dps wisely, because if we take safety into consideration then dodging all around for dps is not necessarily the safest thing to do) with braindead style of play not even mentioning standards for dps classes.

@ShadowAgent.6053 said:
I would be in favor of reverting just the DJ position back to where it was and have it consume malice in addition to whatever they decide to put as a stealth attack.

Why would they do that? As long as my target is marked for death and is not dead yet, the malice should stay.
You do not scrap the core mechanics after 8 months for no reason.

I mean, I just like the new system better in principle. Implementation does need more work tho imo on all weapon sets. I can see how if they just put DJ back at 4, but keep the need to constantly build malice it would just cause initiative problems again.

Genereally I feel that malice should behave differently depending on the weapon set, however I think that asking for a second rework is a lost battle. I also suspect that reverting everything back to the old system is going to have a negative reaction, since some weapon sets perform better with the new system, even with the gameplay/flow issues.

From a personal point of view, this update made DE better for me in every way regarding performance in open world and instanced content (PvE). This is with my playstyle, my choice of gear and etc. in mind. However I understand that some people fell in love with the spec due to its original implementation and playstyle (main conduit here being the rifle I'm guessing) in PvE, PvP and WvW. So if most are like you and feel a revert is needed, then so be it, I don't have a problem with that.

My vote is keep the current system, but change the way malice interacts with the weapons (gave a more detailed post in the malice generation feedback thread).

@ShadowAgent.6053 said:
I mean, I just like the new system better in principle. Implementation does need more work tho imo on all weapon sets. I can see how if they just put DJ back at 4, but keep the need to constantly build malice it would just cause initiative problems again.

How come? How does that make sense?
Malice was tied to marking a target for death.

Now I get angry at a target, just to fire one special bullet with a totally kitten stipulation (stealth, using our precious dodges), it survives and all of my malice is gone while it's still marked for death? As said before, the current system is not "malice", it's the pure defintion of sadism. You get satisfaction for repeatedly shooting or hurting a person ending in a climax, and then you restart.

This is terrible bullocks, has nothing to do with Deadeye. Nothing. I can't "harass my enemy from a distance" if I have to get into 900 range, or going full melee on Daggers, or having to dodge on a small ledge I used to kneel. I repeat: The target had a huge clue, and if you just kept silent, the malice gain was super slow. If you showed yourself and attacked, it went up faster. Then you could fire two shots while kneeling and if your enemy survived then, you could finish them off or retreat.

Now I am supposed to circle dance around my enemy in order to get malice which leaves counterplay, then I use my dodge which is another counterplay to get into kneel - counterplay - just to shoot ONE ridiculously week, glorified auto attack. Sorry, this kitten is wrong on all levels.

It might suit your style, but I know that Rifle Deadeye was a super, super rare spec. I saw in my entire time, I kitten you not, ONE, einen, 1, other Deadeye. Because people like you and others want it to dash around and mash buttons. But this is not what Deadeye has been released at, advertised at, etc. Look at the description, at the picture, at the trailer. Nothing of that has remained.

I would be glad if you guys that are now happy go back to the elite or core that is supposed to be yours. But this bastardized gunslinger spazz-out button mash nonsense is not the safe snipe gameplay. Not only did aNet quit the game for me succesfully, but also removed any way for a solo player - that was underperforming already, but admitted that, because Rifle DE was and still IS a joke compared to the others - to survive. I enjoyed Rifle DE until this abomination of "ideas" of Mr. Gee, so did I do with this game. I am right now spending my time finding me a new MMORPG. It's incredibly heartbreaking. After kitten up Engineer and Scrapper, aNet destroys my next class.

It's insane how fast my hate towards this company increased, 1 week ago I'd have jumped through burning hoops, but when I see how loosely they keep care of their game and turn solid and fine things 180° around for no reason - did anyone asked for this garbage? - I wonder what BS they would come up with next time. I WOULD create a Necromancer, but seeing that class is being cried over, I do not start another character just to be turned into a 1960s flower-picking hippie or something when I got used to it. Or a sign spinner.

@ShadowAgent.6053 said:
I mean, I just like the new system better in principle. Implementation does need more work tho imo on all weapon sets. I can see how if they just put DJ back at 4, but keep the need to constantly build malice it would just cause initiative problems again.

How come? How does that make sense?
Malice was tied to marking a target for death.

Now I get angry at a target, just to fire one special bullet with a totally kitten stipulation (stealth, using our precious dodges), it survives and all of my malice is gone while it's still marked for death? As said before, the current system is not "malice", it's the pure defintion of sadism. You get satisfaction for repeatedly shooting or hurting a person ending in a climax, and then you restart.

This is terrible bullocks, has nothing to do with Deadeye. Nothing. I can't "harass my enemy from a distance" if I have to get into 900 range, or going full melee on Daggers, or having to dodge on a small ledge I used to kneel. I repeat: The target had a huge clue, and if you just kept silent, the malice gain was super slow. If you showed yourself and attacked, it went up faster. Then you could fire two shots while kneeling and if your enemy survived then, you could finish them off or retreat.

Now I am supposed to circle dance around my enemy in order to get malice which leaves counterplay, then I use my dodge which is another counterplay to get into kneel - counterplay - just to shoot ONE ridiculously week, glorified auto attack. Sorry, this kitten is wrong on all levels.

It might suit your style, but I know that Rifle Deadeye was a super, super rare spec. I saw in my entire time, I kitten you not, ONE, einen, 1, other Deadeye. Because people like you and others want it to dash around and mash buttons. But this is not what Deadeye has been released at, advertised at, etc. Look at the description, at the picture, at the trailer. Nothing of that has remained.

I would be glad if you guys that are now happy go back to the elite or core that is supposed to be yours. But this bastardized gunslinger spazz-out button mash nonsense is not the safe snipe gameplay. Not only did aNet quit the game for me succesfully, but also removed any way for a solo player - that was underperforming already, but admitted that, because Rifle DE was and still IS a joke compared to the others - to survive. I enjoyed Rifle DE until this abomination of "ideas" of Mr. Gee, so did I do with this game. I am right now spending my time finding me a new MMORPG. It's incredibly heartbreaking. After kitten up Engineer and Scrapper, aNet destroys my next class.

It's insane how fast my hate towards this company increased, 1 week ago I'd have jumped through burning hoops, but when I see how loosely they keep care of their game and turn solid and fine things 180° around for no reason - did anyone asked for this garbage? - I wonder what BS they would come up with next time. I WOULD create a Necromancer, but seeing that class is being cried over, I do not start another character just to be turned into a 1960s flower-picking hippie or something when I got used to it. Or a sign spinner.

Okay dude. You seriously wait 21 seconds to take down every single target in pve? A group of spiders and 2 minutes later and they're all dead while you fly off into the distance! A few things. Firstly if the enemy cannot reach you their health will regenerate and they will ignore you. Most ledges cause this. Maybe you can pull off a kill but is that enjoyable? More like assisted suicide. Plus the fact anything vet or above is gonna chew the shot and spit it out, forcing you to spam which you can do a max of three times, which will kill the glassier ones accompanied by a mob, thirsty for vengeance and now you can't even kneel again for a while. Unless you spend your whole time in I dunno Queensdale. You'd feel pretty powerful there I guess....You talk about stalking targets in other posts. This isn't Hitman, or Dishonered. Enemies either stand still or walk in a circle. There is no stalking. Unless you're talking about Wvw, where anyone slightly versed knows they being stalked making the situation comedic rather than cool.

It's a fact that not everyone hate Dead Eye, the changes in my opinion is acceptable since it trade the old method (Full malice DJ spam remember,yes it's not 4 4 4 4 4 4 4... but you still gonna end up mashing button for DJ in the end) for a concept that actually has more branch than it was (Acro can replace trickery + DE/Crit, M7 are actually viable talent for other weapon rather than BqBd all day,etc).

Indeed this change is also got some flaw like low DJ damage especially at PvE (current number is ok back then since you can spam the skill all day), clunky sniper scope stealth-reveal mechanic, unreliable malice gain @ PvP because you got punished even more than old patch when your target ran away. Heck, i even think that bonus initiative at max stack should apply to other trait than M7 to give option for other player to experiment their own initiative-spamming build that become the trademark of Deadeye trait.

@Ryans.9571 said:
Just gonna add my voice in here, I think the changes for non rifle deadeye are super interesting but as a PvE Rifle Deadeye I know feel like I have no purpose. We already had to struggle to prove ourselves but now it is almost impossible to come close to keeping up damage wise. Please find some sort of middle ground that gets rifle back to the way it was while keeping up the support for non rifle Deadeyes. Right now though, I have lost a lot of my drive to play, I am sure in a week or two I will be back but not on my Thief, not unless Rifle gets fixed.

I'm with you, why don't give some changes (in particular malice) a chance. You have to try new things to get a chance of improving the game. But what I personally still don't understand at all are the changes to the rifle skills: If all the rifle skills would be reset (DJ back at #4, cursed bullet back at stealth-1, snipers cover grants stealth etc.) then why not try out a new malice system.
But right now it just feels like the changes only make your life as a rifle-DE much harder without any reason. The whole rifle-system of DE seems screwed up, mainly because of the weird rifle-skill arrangement (necessary evade for stealth, worthless smoke wall, DJ not at #4 and the absence of cursed bullet - why do we need this obstacles?).

If you have any other mmo, De Rifle is easy to play (like most class in gw2). the only current real issue is that you can lost your stealth after a roll if you have a shot en route to your target at that moment, but that will be fixed hopefully.

I don't think "easy" and "difficult" to play are the right words to describe the problem here. It just doesn't feel right how the rifle skills are arranged now, especially if you consider that all these changes were made for this useless smoke wall. I just wanna say I can't see any reasons for the rifle-skill (<> not malice, give it a try) changes at all - for me this arrangement takes so much fun out of the DE that I don't play it for the moment. And that's a pity because that was by far my favourite class.

Well, I find the specs more fun now than before the patch because it is far more dynamic to play. So to each its own.

Well it's not "to each their own" because the change is forced, it's not an option to play it one way or the other lol

Couldn't the devs have made changes that altered malice and rifle skills through traits? A sub-spec line? Rather than tear down things they made that people find fun and just replace them with new things, they could just add the new things and players can decide which gameplay is more fun?

@babazhook.6805 said:
When you look at this objectively his simply not true. P/P is in a better place since these changes.

No. We have lost the Malice boost to our damage output. The only way to use Malice now is to take the two cantrips that provide it. The net benefit of using those cantrips to stealth is a slight boost to skill #1 which allows the very same shot except for a VERY small amount of torment. There is no situation in which that is better than a round of Unload. P/P deadeyes lost the Malice damage output and gained nothing in return that we didn't already have.

This would be a very easy fix for Arenanet if they made the very same deadeye talent that gained you stealth when dodging with a rifle function on other weapons as well.

I have already rebutted that claim in detail.

Did you already have 10 percent damage from Iron sight without the need of Malice?
Did you already have 1 percent added damage per boon?
Did you already have a 7 INI refund of INI on reaching 7 malice?
Did you already have 5 stacks torment with Sneak Attack? (In a p/p power build this some 2500 damage against a moving target)
Did you already have the ability to reset Mali 7 using Sneak attack thus garnering another source of 7 ini + boons?

You get MORE Unloads now because you get More INI. The simple act of stealthing and attacking to flush your Malice will set you up for yet more unloads. Unload and build malice to seven. You get those boons and 7 ini. SMELD for stealth and sneak attack thus dumping your malice. You get the Torment damage and Mali recharges again and within less then 10 seconds you get another 7 ini plus those boons. You could not do that before.

Maybe the dmg with P/P is higher, I don‘t know because I don‘t play P/P (if I‘m not forced through this patch...). And it‘s good for you if you like your P/P deadeye, really.
But shouldn‘t DE offer a possibility to play rifle-DE as it was designed? Should it be all about P/P unload? Because at the moment it isn‘t fun to play with rifle at all. And I fear in two weeks everyone (= all the old rifle users) is running around with two pistols unloading the hell out of them. If you like this playstyle it‘s fine but i don‘t like the fact that you are forced to play like this. The Thief class will lose a big part of it‘s diversity just because of this patch and everyone else will start to complain about all the unload thiefs out there again (which is quite possible to end in a P/P DE nerf).

So don‘t get me wrong, I haven‘t a problem with P/P thiefs at all. I just think this are two separate discussions and if we mix them up we are lost in both of them...

I really hope some ANet devs see our problem and will at least change the rifle skills back, including stealth through kneeling and DJ.
That wouldn‘t affect the P/P DE at all and the game would be much more diversified and fun to play again.

When we are discussing the DE spec we are discussing ALL the weaponsets and it important , for the sake of balance that we do not lump in the propblems with Rifle in with everything else. I am not suggesting it all about p/p unload. I am pointing out that P/P saw net gains here, contrary to claims made just as P/d did and d/d did. This topic is "an eye on the deadeye" and when we are speaking about the deadeye it NOT just the rifle anymore then daredevil just about the staff. It was not me that claimed P/P was nerfed by this change. It was another and I responded to him.

I would suggest for the sake of accuracy that if people want to talk about issues with DE rifle then the Topic be labeled DE Rifle and we talk just about DE rifle there. The majority of changes happened to th TRAITS and utilities inside the DE spec and when we discuss those changes we have to acknowledge all of the other weaponsets that prosper or suffer by those changes.

To the RIFLE spec itself , if there indeed issues outside a small few traits that might need a relook (which again would affect other weapons as well) such as PAYBACK , Burst of shadows and perhaps BqoBk , most of the fixes should come from the Rifle skills themself and or how the singular trait of the new Silent scope interacts.

Far too many posts rely on hyperbole with claims like a build "unviable" or "all junk" or "we got nothing" under the meme that it we whine louder about EVERYTHING it becomes closer to the reality.

It was not too long ago that people were claiming the entire DE spec sucked and was garbage and unplayable. Rifle itself saw a small handful of changes but people were claiming it as trash. I always find it interesting as to how something claimed as trash tier suddenly becomes this holy grail that must be defended at all costs.

@babazhook.6805 said:
When we are discussing the DE spec we are discussing ALL the weaponsets and it important , for the sake of balance that we do not lump in the propblems with Rifle in with everything else. I am not suggesting it all about p/p unload. I am pointing out that P/P saw net gains here, contrary to claims made just as P/d did and d/d did. This topic is "an eye on the deadeye" and when we are speaking about the deadeye it NOT just the rifle anymore then daredevil just about the staff. It was not me that claimed P/P was nerfed by this change. It was another and I responded to him.

I would suggest for the sake of accuracy that if people want to talk about issues with DE rifle then the Topic be labeled DE Rifle and we talk just about DE rifle there. The majority of changes happened to th TRAITS and utilities inside the DE spec and when we discuss those changes we have to acknowledge all of the other weaponsets that prosper or suffer by those changes.

To the RIFLE spec itself , if there indeed issues outside a small few traits that might need a relook (which again would affect other weapons as well) such as PAYBACK , Burst of shadows and perhaps BqoBk , most of the fixes should come from the Rifle skills themself and or how the singular trait of the new Silent scope interacts.

Far too many posts rely on hyperbole with claims like a build "unviable" or "all junk" or "we got nothing" under the meme that it we whine louder about EVERYTHING it becomes closer to the reality.

It was not too long ago that people were claiming the entire DE spec sucked and was garbage and unplayable. Rifle itself saw a small handful of changes but people were claiming it as trash. I always find it interesting as to how something claimed as trash tier suddenly becomes this holy grail that must be defended at all costs.

I add "blanket statements" right up there with "hyperbole." I instantly fell in love with Rifle Deadeye when it released and have played it non-stop ever since--sub-par DPS be damned. I doubt I'm alone in that sentiment. So, to me, it's always been the "holy grail."

@babazhook.6805 said:
When you look at this objectively his simply not true. P/P is in a better place since these changes.

No. We have lost the Malice boost to our damage output. The only way to use Malice now is to take the two cantrips that provide it. The net benefit of using those cantrips to stealth is a slight boost to skill #1 which allows the very same shot except for a VERY small amount of torment. There is no situation in which that is better than a round of Unload. P/P deadeyes lost the Malice damage output and gained nothing in return that we didn't already have.

This would be a very easy fix for Arenanet if they made the very same deadeye talent that gained you stealth when dodging with a rifle function on other weapons as well.

I have already rebutted that claim in detail.

Did you already have 10 percent damage from Iron sight without the need of Malice?
Did you already have 1 percent added damage per boon?
Did you already have a 7 INI refund of INI on reaching 7 malice?
Did you already have 5 stacks torment with Sneak Attack? (In a p/p power build this some 2500 damage against a moving target)
Did you already have the ability to reset Mali 7 using Sneak attack thus garnering another source of 7 ini + boons?

You get MORE Unloads now because you get More INI. The simple act of stealthing and attacking to flush your Malice will set you up for yet more unloads. Unload and build malice to seven. You get those boons and 7 ini. SMELD for stealth and sneak attack thus dumping your malice. You get the Torment damage and Mali recharges again and within less then 10 seconds you get another 7 ini plus those boons. You could not do that before.

Maybe the dmg with P/P is higher, I don‘t know because I don‘t play P/P (if I‘m not forced through this patch...). And it‘s good for you if you like your P/P deadeye, really.
But shouldn‘t DE offer a possibility to play rifle-DE as it was designed? Should it be all about P/P unload? Because at the moment it isn‘t fun to play with rifle at all. And I fear in two weeks everyone (= all the old rifle users) is running around with two pistols unloading the hell out of them. If you like this playstyle it‘s fine but i don‘t like the fact that you are forced to play like this. The Thief class will lose a big part of it‘s diversity just because of this patch and everyone else will start to complain about all the unload thiefs out there again (which is quite possible to end in a P/P DE nerf).

So don‘t get me wrong, I haven‘t a problem with P/P thiefs at all. I just think this are two separate discussions and if we mix them up we are lost in both of them...

I really hope some ANet devs see our problem and will at least change the rifle skills back, including stealth through kneeling and DJ.
That wouldn‘t affect the P/P DE at all and the game would be much more diversified and fun to play again.

When we are discussing the DE spec we are discussing ALL the weaponsets and it important , for the sake of balance that we do not lump in the propblems with Rifle in with everything else. I am not suggesting it all about p/p unload. I am pointing out that P/P saw net gains here, contrary to claims made just as P/d did and d/d did. This topic is "an eye on the deadeye" and when we are speaking about the deadeye it NOT just the rifle anymore then daredevil just about the staff. It was not me that claimed P/P was nerfed by this change. It was another and I responded to him.

I would suggest for the sake of accuracy that if people want to talk about issues with DE rifle then the Topic be labeled DE Rifle and we talk just about DE rifle there. The majority of changes happened to th TRAITS and utilities inside the DE spec and when we discuss those changes we have to acknowledge all of the other weaponsets that prosper or suffer by those changes.

To the RIFLE spec itself , if there indeed issues outside a small few traits that might need a relook (which again would affect other weapons as well) such as PAYBACK , Burst of shadows and perhaps BqoBk , most of the fixes should come from the Rifle skills themself and or how the singular trait of the new Silent scope interacts.

Far too many posts rely on hyperbole with claims like a build "unviable" or "all junk" or "we got nothing" under the meme that it we whine louder about EVERYTHING it becomes closer to the reality.

It was not too long ago that people were claiming the entire DE spec sucked and was garbage and unplayable. Rifle itself saw a small handful of changes but people were claiming it as trash. I always find it interesting as to how something claimed as trash tier suddenly becomes this holy grail that must be defended at all costs.

Of course this is a dscussion about all aspects of the DE so also about all the other weapons which can be used. But the problem is between all this positive feedback of P/P, D/P and D/D thiefs the negative rifle DE feedback seems a little lost. And even if the rifle is the main weapon of DE I don't say everyone has to play with it at all, but there should at least be the possibility to use it without having an extremely annoying build.
In this aspect i tried to protect the negative rifle feedback from drowning between all the positive other weapon feedbacks. My statement was not directed against your statement about P/P changes. My first impression was you try to justify the bad new rifle mechanics through the improvements made for P/P DE (like "why all the crying when everyone can play P/P"). But it seems I got you wrong there, sorry for that.

And about the "suddenly defend of a holy grail": At the beginning of DE you are right, there was much complaining about it but I think this is mainly because it was such a different class from all the others and all who failed with it started to complain. (I liked it from the beginning btw, always was a ranged player).
But in the last few months there wasn't much complaining about the rifle and that's part of what makes me so frustrated; there are so many annoying changes (for the rifle) which no one asked for. Slowly everyone got used to it and right in this moment came this huge unnecessary change of the whole rifle build.

@babazhook.6805 said:
When you look at this objectively his simply not true. P/P is in a better place since these changes.

No. We have lost the Malice boost to our damage output. The only way to use Malice now is to take the two cantrips that provide it. The net benefit of using those cantrips to stealth is a slight boost to skill #1 which allows the very same shot except for a VERY small amount of torment. There is no situation in which that is better than a round of Unload. P/P deadeyes lost the Malice damage output and gained nothing in return that we didn't already have.

This would be a very easy fix for Arenanet if they made the very same deadeye talent that gained you stealth when dodging with a rifle function on other weapons as well.

I have already rebutted that claim in detail.

Did you already have 10 percent damage from Iron sight without the need of Malice?
Did you already have 1 percent added damage per boon?
Did you already have a 7 INI refund of INI on reaching 7 malice?
Did you already have 5 stacks torment with Sneak Attack? (In a p/p power build this some 2500 damage against a moving target)
Did you already have the ability to reset Mali 7 using Sneak attack thus garnering another source of 7 ini + boons?

You get MORE Unloads now because you get More INI. The simple act of stealthing and attacking to flush your Malice will set you up for yet more unloads. Unload and build malice to seven. You get those boons and 7 ini. SMELD for stealth and sneak attack thus dumping your malice. You get the Torment damage and Mali recharges again and within less then 10 seconds you get another 7 ini plus those boons. You could not do that before.

Maybe the dmg with P/P is higher, I don‘t know because I don‘t play P/P (if I‘m not forced through this patch...). And it‘s good for you if you like your P/P deadeye, really.
But shouldn‘t DE offer a possibility to play rifle-DE as it was designed? Should it be all about P/P unload? Because at the moment it isn‘t fun to play with rifle at all. And I fear in two weeks everyone (= all the old rifle users) is running around with two pistols unloading the hell out of them. If you like this playstyle it‘s fine but i don‘t like the fact that you are forced to play like this. The Thief class will lose a big part of it‘s diversity just because of this patch and everyone else will start to complain about all the unload thiefs out there again (which is quite possible to end in a P/P DE nerf).

So don‘t get me wrong, I haven‘t a problem with P/P thiefs at all. I just think this are two separate discussions and if we mix them up we are lost in both of them...

I really hope some ANet devs see our problem and will at least change the rifle skills back, including stealth through kneeling and DJ.
That wouldn‘t affect the P/P DE at all and the game would be much more diversified and fun to play again.

When we are discussing the DE spec we are discussing ALL the weaponsets and it important , for the sake of balance that we do not lump in the propblems with Rifle in with everything else. I am not suggesting it all about p/p unload. I am pointing out that P/P saw net gains here, contrary to claims made just as P/d did and d/d did. This topic is "an eye on the deadeye" and when we are speaking about the deadeye it NOT just the rifle anymore then daredevil just about the staff. It was not me that claimed P/P was nerfed by this change. It was another and I responded to him.

I would suggest for the sake of accuracy that if people want to talk about issues with DE rifle then the Topic be labeled DE Rifle and we talk just about DE rifle there. The majority of changes happened to th TRAITS and utilities inside the DE spec and when we discuss those changes we have to acknowledge all of the other weaponsets that prosper or suffer by those changes.

To the RIFLE spec itself , if there indeed issues outside a small few traits that might need a relook (which again would affect other weapons as well) such as PAYBACK , Burst of shadows and perhaps BqoBk , most of the fixes should come from the Rifle skills themself and or how the singular trait of the new Silent scope interacts.

Far too many posts rely on hyperbole with claims like a build "unviable" or "all junk" or "we got nothing" under the meme that it we whine louder about EVERYTHING it becomes closer to the reality.

It was not too long ago that people were claiming the entire DE spec sucked and was garbage and unplayable. Rifle itself saw a small handful of changes but people were claiming it as trash. I always find it interesting as to how something claimed as trash tier suddenly becomes this holy grail that must be defended at all costs.

Of course this is a dscussion about all aspects of the DE so also about all the other weapons which can be used. But the problem is between all this positive feedback of P/P, D/P and D/D thiefs the negative rifle DE feedback seems a little lost. And even if the rifle is the main weapon of DE I don't say everyone has to play with it at all, but there should at least be the possibility to use it without having an extremely annoying build.
In this aspect i tried to protect the negative rifle feedback from drowning between all the positive other weapon feedbacks. My statement was not directed against your statement about P/P changes. My first impression was you try to justify the bad new rifle mechanics through the improvements made for P/P DE (like "why all the crying when everyone can play P/P"). But it seems I got you wrong there, sorry for that.

And about the "suddenly defend of a holy grail": At the beginning of DE you are right, there was much complaining about it but I think this is mainly because it was such a different class from all the others and all who failed with it started to complain. (I liked it from the beginning btw, always was a ranged player).
But in the last few months there wasn't much complaining about the rifle in my opinion, and that's part of what makes me so frustrated; there are so many annoying changes (for the rifle) which no one asked for. Slowly everyone got used to it and right in this moment came this huge unnecessary change of the whole rifle build.

the rifle discussions were more prevalent because it is one of the main focuses of the rework:

Hello to all the sneaky thieves out there! I'm unstealthing today to reveal details of the upcoming changes to the Deadeye profession. In a previous update we increased the damage of rifle skills to put Deadeye in a good spot from a DPS-perspective, so this update is focused more around improving their gameplay patterns and mechanics.

The main areas we're looking to address are:

Malice Complexity - Malice gain rules are obscure and don't allow much interaction from the Deadeye.

Trait Synergies - Minor traits fight with each other and there aren't strong choices at some tiers.

while all other DE builds are factored in (and they should be, because we're talking about DE after all which is under thief) because of malice and traits and how it affects them, specifically reworking rifle to work with the new changes was one of the main intentions of the dev team.

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

Oh look the typical "Get Gud" Poster. Sir I'll have you know my experience in this game probably and most certainly out shines yours, with over 6000 hours of game time and having been here since the beginning of the game, I am in no way a noob. Here's a question for you, have you tried it yet? Have you actually done testing with this?

And No the new Malice system is not better to the old one, This one takes focus off the Deadeye profession and the Signature Rifle itself, and puts Focus on the Thiefs Core Stealth Attacks more than the actual Rifle. A player who does not use Stealth in there build is now being forced to take Stealth if he/she wants to be efficient in any capacity. From a customizable game play stand and this is unacceptable. The old system allowed the Player using the Deadeye to put more focus and effort into his target, and not have to worry about stacking yet another energy bar that they have to manage besides the one they already have Initiative. And now with them making Dodge a Stealth Proc, they've effectively turned it into another required energy source to be effective due to how the new Malice works.

But you are probably the kind of Deadeye who doesn't use Rifle right? The Pistol kind who is absolute loving the new changes cause they don't even affect you at all.

The fact is that any DE who uses a rifle lost out, we had the chance to play in a completely different way and then this patch took it away.
I have lvl 80 Necro, Ele, Guardian, Mesmer and Hunter and they all feel pretty much the same to play - which is why I stuck with the DE, I slaved for his gear but I might as well throw my legendary rifle out now as all that time has been wasted. And yes I am whining because of that but remember I contributed to the whole game economy to get my gear and for what?
All you apologists for this royal shafting might as well face up to the fact that it could be any of you next ... all that stuff you worked so hard to get, the build you spent all that time to perfect could be trashed tomorrow. Why work towards your legendary gear, why work towards any goal in this game if it can be taken away at the drop of a hat FOR NO GOOD REASON?

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

Oh look the typical "Get Gud" Poster. Sir I'll have you know my experience in this game probably and most certainly out shines yours, with over 6000 hours of game time and having been here since the beginning of the game, I am in no way a noob. Here's a question for you, have you tried it yet? Have you actually done testing with this?

And No the new Malice system is not better to the old one, This one takes focus off the Deadeye profession and the Signature Rifle itself, and puts Focus on the Thiefs Core Stealth Attacks more than the actual Rifle. A player who does not use Stealth in there build is now being forced to take Stealth if he/she wants to be efficient in any capacity. From a customizable game play stand and this is unacceptable. The old system allowed the Player using the Deadeye to put more focus and effort into his target, and not have to worry about stacking yet another energy bar that they have to manage besides the one they already have Initiative. And now with them making Dodge a Stealth Proc, they've effectively turned it into another required energy source to be effective due to how the new Malice works.

But you are probably the kind of Deadeye who doesn't use Rifle right? The Pistol kind who is absolute loving the new changes cause they don't even affect you at all.

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

Oh look the typical "Get Gud" Poster. Sir I'll have you know my experience in this game probably and most certainly out shines yours, with over 6000 hours of game time and having been here since the beginning of the game, I am in no way a noob. Here's a question for you, have you tried it yet? Have you actually done testing with this?

And No the new Malice system is not better to the old one, This one takes focus off the Deadeye profession and the Signature Rifle itself, and puts Focus on the Thiefs Core Stealth Attacks more than the actual Rifle. A player who does not use Stealth in there build is now being forced to take Stealth if he/she wants to be efficient in any capacity. From a customizable game play stand and this is unacceptable. The old system allowed the Player using the Deadeye to put more focus and effort into his target, and not have to worry about stacking yet another energy bar that they have to manage besides the one they already have Initiative. And now with them making Dodge a Stealth Proc, they've effectively turned it into another required energy source to be effective due to how the new Malice works.

But you are probably the kind of Deadeye who doesn't use Rifle right? The Pistol kind who is absolute loving the new changes cause they don't even affect you at all.

Hours played =/= skill. Wrong argument, mate.

And all your BS < gameplay

You assume that after over 6000 hours I wouldnt be proficient in the professions I play? I have over 20 characters between this account and my main account. Every Elite Spec unlocked all characters atleast geared with Exotic or better gear. I've built two legendarys granted thats not a whole In comparison to other players but its still something. If you want me to prove myself then I will gladly oblige, I'll even let you set the terms to be friendly.

Regardless my position still stands on the Deadeye and then Malice system, I played Deadeye often since the start of Path of Fire and enjoyed it long before they recieved the damage increases. This change just screams under tested and poorly implemented, made to solve the minor problem of one build...

@babazhook.6805 said:
It was not too long ago that people were claiming the entire DE spec sucked and was garbage and unplayable. Rifle itself saw a small handful of changes but people were claiming it as trash. I always find it interesting as to how something claimed as trash tier suddenly becomes this holy grail that must be defended at all costs.

Because these people who complained back then are the ones that benefit from that BS that happens right now. They complained rifle sucked and want a gunslinger and some form of stupid Daredevil-With-Guns.
People - like me - that never complained since beta week 2 of PoF, the "brave" Rifle Deadeyes, now of course defend their holy grail.

You messed a few things up in your argumentation; I hope I cleared it up for you before spreading more misleading rubbish that sounds like we Rifle Deadeyes were complaining. We were Rifle DEs because we could get used to it, the whiners went Daredevil and kept nagging. Do not mix that up please.

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

Oh look the typical "Get Gud" Poster. Sir I'll have you know my experience in this game probably and most certainly out shines yours, with over 6000 hours of game time and having been here since the beginning of the game, I am in no way a noob. Here's a question for you, have you tried it yet? Have you actually done testing with this?

And No the new Malice system is not better to the old one, This one takes focus off the Deadeye profession and the Signature Rifle itself, and puts Focus on the Thiefs Core Stealth Attacks more than the actual Rifle. A player who does not use Stealth in there build is now being forced to take Stealth if he/she wants to be efficient in any capacity. From a customizable game play stand and this is unacceptable. The old system allowed the Player using the Deadeye to put more focus and effort into his target, and not have to worry about stacking yet another energy bar that they have to manage besides the one they already have Initiative. And now with them making Dodge a Stealth Proc, they've effectively turned it into another required energy source to be effective due to how the new Malice works.

But you are probably the kind of Deadeye who doesn't use Rifle right? The Pistol kind who is absolute loving the new changes cause they don't even affect you at all.

Hours played =/= skill. Wrong argument, mate.

And all your BS < gameplay

You assume that after over 6000 hours I wouldnt be proficient in the professions I play? I have over 20 characters between this account and my main account. Every Elite Spec unlocked all characters atleast geared with Exotic or better gear. I've built two legendarys granted thats not a whole In comparison to other players but its still something. If you want me to prove myself then I will gladly oblige, I'll even let you set the terms to be friendly.

Regardless my position still stands on the Deadeye and then Malice system, I played Deadeye often since the start of Path of Fire and enjoyed it long before they recieved the damage increases. This change just screams under tested and poorly implemented, made to solve the minor problem of one build...

I assume nothing because I do not care about you. Just that hours played is not skill. So use another argument plz.

Btw, there is some issue with current iteration of malice system, but the DE specs was clearly poorly designed before the patch. Once you had your 5 or 7 malice stack, you would only spam Dj, how is that not kitten?

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

Oh look the typical "Get Gud" Poster. Sir I'll have you know my experience in this game probably and most certainly out shines yours, with over 6000 hours of game time and having been here since the beginning of the game, I am in no way a noob. Here's a question for you, have you tried it yet? Have you actually done testing with this?

And No the new Malice system is not better to the old one, This one takes focus off the Deadeye profession and the Signature Rifle itself, and puts Focus on the Thiefs Core Stealth Attacks more than the actual Rifle. A player who does not use Stealth in there build is now being forced to take Stealth if he/she wants to be efficient in any capacity. From a customizable game play stand and this is unacceptable. The old system allowed the Player using the Deadeye to put more focus and effort into his target, and not have to worry about stacking yet another energy bar that they have to manage besides the one they already have Initiative. And now with them making Dodge a Stealth Proc, they've effectively turned it into another required energy source to be effective due to how the new Malice works.

But you are probably the kind of Deadeye who doesn't use Rifle right? The Pistol kind who is absolute loving the new changes cause they don't even affect you at all.

Hours played =/= skill. Wrong argument, mate.

And all your BS < gameplay

You assume that after over 6000 hours I wouldnt be proficient in the professions I play? I have over 20 characters between this account and my main account. Every Elite Spec unlocked all characters atleast geared with Exotic or better gear. I've built two legendarys granted thats not a whole In comparison to other players but its still something. If you want me to prove myself then I will gladly oblige, I'll even let you set the terms to be friendly.

Regardless my position still stands on the Deadeye and then Malice system, I played Deadeye often since the start of Path of Fire and enjoyed it long before they recieved the damage increases. This change just screams under tested and poorly implemented, made to solve the minor problem of one build...

I assume nothing because I do not care about you. Just that hours played is not skill. So use another argument plz.

I did use another arguement besides hours played in my previous response, I even expanded upon it in my last post, If thats not good enough then I'm all ears to a way I can prove I'm skillful. But this is the last I will argue this, we're getting too off topic and thats how forum conversations like these devolve into maddness and get closed. Lets return the the actual problem and not criticize others skill levels.

@Asphelt.6802 said:
Okay dude. You seriously wait 21 seconds to take down every single target in pve? A group of spiders and 2 minutes later and they're all dead while you fly off into the distance! A few things. Firstly if the enemy cannot reach you their health will regenerate and they will ignore you. Most ledges cause this. Maybe you can pull off a kill but is that enjoyable? More like assisted suicide. Plus the fact anything vet or above is gonna chew the shot and spit it out, forcing you to spam which you can do a max of three times, which will kill the glassier ones accompanied by a mob, thirsty for vengeance and now you can't even kneel again for a while. Unless you spend your whole time in I dunno Queensdale. You'd feel pretty powerful there I guess....You talk about stalking targets in other posts. This isn't Hitman, or Dishonered. Enemies either stand still or walk in a circle. There is no stalking. Unless you're talking about Wvw, where anyone slightly versed knows they being stalked making the situation comedic rather than cool.

I am not your dude. I think you did that before, and I do not wish to be called like that from a stranger.

No, I do not wait 21 seconds to take down a target. That's why I could change targets and still got malice. That's what I am defending OVER AND OVER compared to this "you must use initiative-fuelled skills to gain malice". I felt almost dumb to repeat myself over and over this day, but you still manage not to get the point that I liked the passive malice gain and it made sense.

The ledge problem is a mixed bag, but it works more often than not. I also explained that a lot - the game uses an orb in order to calculate your range and if the enemies can hit you or not. So it really works more then often, else I would have not done that. There are many bugs, but this is just the same problem as the "no valid path". Also, yes, it obviously is enjoyable, that's why I am defending.

Especially in Core Tyria I had melees that could not reach me and I still sniped them down. It works for example with the Pirates and such. It also works in the desert.

I am not sure how you fight Veterans, but I either ignore them or I go into Dagger/Dagger or Pistol/Pistol. When I gained some range, I pulled out my rifle and shot that guy while falling back or dodging - you know, back then when we had dodges to dodge, and not to trigger our basic mechanicsm - stealth. Veterans are not as tough as you describe, and if not, I just ignored them. A sniper also knows what he can fight. If I want to be Rambo, I'd went some heavy armor class.

I never spend time in Queensdale, I am an Asura, duh.

The stalking comes from the malice that builds up over time - I can not stalk someone when I am in his face, stabbing him or shoot them.

Look, back then you had a mark, but you did not know where it comes from. I could have casted it from a ledge and then back off from the edge of the ledge (^^). You could've turned the camera as much as you wished, you know you are marked but not from where. That is stalking. You don't know when it happens, from where it happens. Now I have to be in 900 range with the pistols, that make noise, or I have to be in 50 range to wave around my daggers in your face. Now that is not stalking, that is a friggin face-to-face fight. Do you finally get the point? Also, this is being taken from the official description:

The Deadeye is a thief who stalks their targets with patience and brutal accuracy. They use a Rifle to snipe at a long range, marking targets to harass them with harmful effects. Their mastery of shadow magic lets them cast cantrips which gain bonuses when used against marked targets, or as their malice increases.

— Official site Now look close to the first sentence. "Stalking". And later: "Sniping". "Long Range". Now that pistol has such a long range! They invented Deadeye for us getting over the pistol range just to force is to use them and Daggers. This is utter garbage, but keep on defending that.

It does not matter if they stand still or run in circles, as you say. Nobody talked about Hitman or Dishonored, that mechanic worked for most of us Rifle DEs for over 8 months, so stop that nonsense that you pull out of nowhere. I had many funny moments when the enemy could find a path and ran back and forth while I shot them, then I heard the Malice-ready sound clue and fired a/two DJs, especially in the Desert.

Nobody with a sane mind plays PVP in this game. And literally nowhere did I say I do.

It's funny that you pull out so many random things out of thin air and put it in my mouth, but from someone starting with "Dude" I do not expect anything more than that.

@Astyrah.4015 said:
while all other DE builds are factored in (and they should be, because we're talking about DE after all which is under thief) because of malice and traits and how it affects them, specifically reworking rifle to work with the new changes was one of the main intentions of the dev team.

So we have to use dodges in order to get stealthed with the Rifle and still kneel to fire a ridicously week auto attack that is bugged.
I must say, that is a very good main intention of the "dev" "team".

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

Oh look the typical "Get Gud" Poster. Sir I'll have you know my experience in this game probably and most certainly out shines yours, with over 6000 hours of game time and having been here since the beginning of the game, I am in no way a noob. Here's a question for you, have you tried it yet? Have you actually done testing with this?

And No the new Malice system is not better to the old one, This one takes focus off the Deadeye profession and the Signature Rifle itself, and puts Focus on the Thiefs Core Stealth Attacks more than the actual Rifle. A player who does not use Stealth in there build is now being forced to take Stealth if he/she wants to be efficient in any capacity. From a customizable game play stand and this is unacceptable. The old system allowed the Player using the Deadeye to put more focus and effort into his target, and not have to worry about stacking yet another energy bar that they have to manage besides the one they already have Initiative. And now with them making Dodge a Stealth Proc, they've effectively turned it into another required energy source to be effective due to how the new Malice works.

But you are probably the kind of Deadeye who doesn't use Rifle right? The Pistol kind who is absolute loving the new changes cause they don't even affect you at all.

Hours played =/= skill. Wrong argument, mate.

And all your BS < gameplay

You assume that after over 6000 hours I wouldnt be proficient in the professions I play? I have over 20 characters between this account and my main account. Every Elite Spec unlocked all characters atleast geared with Exotic or better gear. I've built two legendarys granted thats not a whole In comparison to other players but its still something. If you want me to prove myself then I will gladly oblige, I'll even let you set the terms to be friendly.

Regardless my position still stands on the Deadeye and then Malice system, I played Deadeye often since the start of Path of Fire and enjoyed it long before they recieved the damage increases. This change just screams under tested and poorly implemented, made to solve the minor problem of one build...

I assume nothing because I do not care about you. Just that hours played is not skill. So use another argument plz.

I did use another arguement besides hours played in my previous response, I even expanded upon it in my last post, If thats not good enough then I'm all ears to a way I can prove I'm skillful. But this is the last I will argue this, we're getting too off topic and thats how forum conversations like these devolve into maddness and get closed. Lets return the the actual problem and not criticize others skill levels.

Your "actual problem" seems to be just a bunch of opinions colliding.

The actual problem as it stands is Silent Scope's auto-reveal from mid-air projectiles, as well as heal-skills giving malice allowing insane minimal-counterplay backstabs. That's a problem whether you like or dislike the rework of the DE. Everything else is one person's opinion vs. another person's opinion - not problems.

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

Oh look the typical "Get Gud" Poster. Sir I'll have you know my experience in this game probably and most certainly out shines yours, with over 6000 hours of game time and having been here since the beginning of the game, I am in no way a noob. Here's a question for you, have you tried it yet? Have you actually done testing with this?

And No the new Malice system is not better to the old one, This one takes focus off the Deadeye profession and the Signature Rifle itself, and puts Focus on the Thiefs Core Stealth Attacks more than the actual Rifle. A player who does not use Stealth in there build is now being forced to take Stealth if he/she wants to be efficient in any capacity. From a customizable game play stand and this is unacceptable. The old system allowed the Player using the Deadeye to put more focus and effort into his target, and not have to worry about stacking yet another energy bar that they have to manage besides the one they already have Initiative. And now with them making Dodge a Stealth Proc, they've effectively turned it into another required energy source to be effective due to how the new Malice works.

But you are probably the kind of Deadeye who doesn't use Rifle right? The Pistol kind who is absolute loving the new changes cause they don't even affect you at all.

Hours played =/= skill. Wrong argument, mate.

And all your BS < gameplay

You assume that after over 6000 hours I wouldnt be proficient in the professions I play? I have over 20 characters between this account and my main account. Every Elite Spec unlocked all characters atleast geared with Exotic or better gear. I've built two legendarys granted thats not a whole In comparison to other players but its still something. If you want me to prove myself then I will gladly oblige, I'll even let you set the terms to be friendly.

Regardless my position still stands on the Deadeye and then Malice system, I played Deadeye often since the start of Path of Fire and enjoyed it long before they recieved the damage increases. This change just screams under tested and poorly implemented, made to solve the minor problem of one build...

I assume nothing because I do not care about you. Just that hours played is not skill. So use another argument plz.

I did use another arguement besides hours played in my previous response, I even expanded upon it in my last post, If thats not good enough then I'm all ears to a way I can prove I'm skillful. But this is the last I will argue this, we're getting too off topic and thats how forum conversations like these devolve into maddness and get closed. Lets return the the actual problem and not criticize others skill levels.

Your "actual problem" seems to be just a bunch of opinions colliding.

The actual problem as it stands is Silent Scope's auto-reveal from mid-air projectiles, as well as heal-skills giving malice allowing insane minimal-counterplay backstabs. That's a problem whether you like or dislike the rework of the DE. Everything else is one person's opinion vs. another person's opinion - not problems.

Silent Scope is only one Facet of the greater problem. The problem is Arena Net is literally trying to force a Stealth centered and focused play style on the Deadeye whether the player like it or not, and not offering any other avenues of
Utilization or application of the Malice system for non-stealth users.

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

Oh look the typical "Get Gud" Poster. Sir I'll have you know my experience in this game probably and most certainly out shines yours, with over 6000 hours of game time and having been here since the beginning of the game, I am in no way a noob. Here's a question for you, have you tried it yet? Have you actually done testing with this?

And No the new Malice system is not better to the old one, This one takes focus off the Deadeye profession and the Signature Rifle itself, and puts Focus on the Thiefs Core Stealth Attacks more than the actual Rifle. A player who does not use Stealth in there build is now being forced to take Stealth if he/she wants to be efficient in any capacity. From a customizable game play stand and this is unacceptable. The old system allowed the Player using the Deadeye to put more focus and effort into his target, and not have to worry about stacking yet another energy bar that they have to manage besides the one they already have Initiative. And now with them making Dodge a Stealth Proc, they've effectively turned it into another required energy source to be effective due to how the new Malice works.

But you are probably the kind of Deadeye who doesn't use Rifle right? The Pistol kind who is absolute loving the new changes cause they don't even affect you at all.

Hours played =/= skill. Wrong argument, mate.

And all your BS < gameplay

You assume that after over 6000 hours I wouldnt be proficient in the professions I play? I have over 20 characters between this account and my main account. Every Elite Spec unlocked all characters atleast geared with Exotic or better gear. I've built two legendarys granted thats not a whole In comparison to other players but its still something. If you want me to prove myself then I will gladly oblige, I'll even let you set the terms to be friendly.

Regardless my position still stands on the Deadeye and then Malice system, I played Deadeye often since the start of Path of Fire and enjoyed it long before they recieved the damage increases. This change just screams under tested and poorly implemented, made to solve the minor problem of one build...

I assume nothing because I do not care about you. Just that hours played is not skill. So use another argument plz.

I did use another arguement besides hours played in my previous response, I even expanded upon it in my last post, If thats not good enough then I'm all ears to a way I can prove I'm skillful. But this is the last I will argue this, we're getting too off topic and thats how forum conversations like these devolve into maddness and get closed. Lets return the the actual problem and not criticize others skill levels.

Your "actual problem" seems to be just a bunch of opinions colliding.

The actual problem as it stands is Silent Scope's auto-reveal from mid-air projectiles, as well as heal-skills giving malice allowing insane minimal-counterplay backstabs. That's a problem whether you like or dislike the rework of the DE. Everything else is one person's opinion vs. another person's opinion - not problems.

Silent Scope is only one Facet of the greater problem. The problem is Arena Net is literally trying to force a Stealth centered and focused play style on the Deadeye whether the player like it or not, and not offering any other avenues of
Utilization or application of the Malice system for non-stealth users.

That is the fundamental problem with the state of current Deadeye.

They may have changed the elite spec's mechanic to be stealth-centric, but that does not mean you need to focus your entire playstyle around it. The mechanic does not make the spec, and it certainly doesn't force you to make your whole playstyle around stealth. It adds an offensive bonus if you choose to take advantage of it, if you don't want to take any weaponset, utility, trait, or elite skill that takes advantage of your malice - that's your priority, not a problem with the spec. It's like someone complaining about conditions, but not having a single condi clear in their build.

@Turk.5460 said:
Yeah sorry, but that's not a fact, that's called an opinion.
I am a DE that uses a rifle and I'm more potent than ever.

Yeah, in WVW/PVP you are.
Care to explain why even benchmark submitters are refusing to even spend time on Rifle DE and all the attention is going to D/D DE?
I don't know, maybe it has to do with the wooping 5.5K DPS loss, which gets even worse when you glitch out of stealth. People are reporting a kitten 9K DPS loss in some cases and you mean to tell me you are somehow more potent now? Lol

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

Oh look the typical "Get Gud" Poster. Sir I'll have you know my experience in this game probably and most certainly out shines yours, with over 6000 hours of game time and having been here since the beginning of the game, I am in no way a noob. Here's a question for you, have you tried it yet? Have you actually done testing with this?

And No the new Malice system is not better to the old one, This one takes focus off the Deadeye profession and the Signature Rifle itself, and puts Focus on the Thiefs Core Stealth Attacks more than the actual Rifle. A player who does not use Stealth in there build is now being forced to take Stealth if he/she wants to be efficient in any capacity. From a customizable game play stand and this is unacceptable. The old system allowed the Player using the Deadeye to put more focus and effort into his target, and not have to worry about stacking yet another energy bar that they have to manage besides the one they already have Initiative. And now with them making Dodge a Stealth Proc, they've effectively turned it into another required energy source to be effective due to how the new Malice works.

But you are probably the kind of Deadeye who doesn't use Rifle right? The Pistol kind who is absolute loving the new changes cause they don't even affect you at all.

Hours played =/= skill. Wrong argument, mate.

And all your BS < gameplay

You assume that after over 6000 hours I wouldnt be proficient in the professions I play? I have over 20 characters between this account and my main account. Every Elite Spec unlocked all characters atleast geared with Exotic or better gear. I've built two legendarys granted thats not a whole In comparison to other players but its still something. If you want me to prove myself then I will gladly oblige, I'll even let you set the terms to be friendly.

Regardless my position still stands on the Deadeye and then Malice system, I played Deadeye often since the start of Path of Fire and enjoyed it long before they recieved the damage increases. This change just screams under tested and poorly implemented, made to solve the minor problem of one build...

I assume nothing because I do not care about you. Just that hours played is not skill. So use another argument plz.

I did use another arguement besides hours played in my previous response, I even expanded upon it in my last post, If thats not good enough then I'm all ears to a way I can prove I'm skillful. But this is the last I will argue this, we're getting too off topic and thats how forum conversations like these devolve into maddness and get closed. Lets return the the actual problem and not criticize others skill levels.

Your "actual problem" seems to be just a bunch of opinions colliding.

The actual problem as it stands is Silent Scope's auto-reveal from mid-air projectiles, as well as heal-skills giving malice allowing insane minimal-counterplay backstabs. That's a problem whether you like or dislike the rework of the DE. Everything else is one person's opinion vs. another person's opinion - not problems.

Silent Scope is only one Facet of the greater problem. The problem is Arena Net is literally trying to force a Stealth centered and focused play style on the Deadeye whether the player like it or not, and not offering any other avenues of
Utilization or application of the Malice system for non-stealth users.

That is the fundamental problem with the state of current Deadeye.

They may have changed the elite spec's mechanic to be stealth-centric, but that does not mean you need to focus your entire playstyle around it. The mechanic does not make the spec, and it certainly doesn't force you to make your whole playstyle around stealth. It adds an offensive bonus if you choose to take advantage of it, if you don't want to take any weaponset, utility, trait, or elite skill that takes advantage of your malice - that's your priority, not a problem with the spec. It's like someone complaining about conditions, but not having a single condi clear in their build.

Your example is lsn't even the least bit related to this, If someone is dumb enough not to use any Condition cleanse in their build its cause of their own contrariness not a problem with the Specializations Mechanics. Sure a player can ignore the malice systems main feature of this version, the point is it makes the Malice system effectively useless to that player. And if they want to play in any efficient manner they have to conform to these changes.

The previous Maice system was beneficial to all Deadeyes regardless of preference in play style, weapon, trait setup skill load out and armor stats. It was in general a more effective system on the broader spectrum and not just for stealth users.

Can we give backstab and DJ the Blurred Frenzy treatment and buff the hell out of those two skills in pve? It'd be a nice dps boost and an easy split. Then fix the irritating thing with the stealth on dodge and see where we're at then?

I get that some people really liked the previous incarnation of Malice - I liked how the dmg increase applied to all my attacks, too. But let's be honest, the whole 'stalking' thing was horribly unfun to play against. YOU may have fun marking someone, then waiting for malice to build or w/e, then smashing your opponent, but it's an awful pvp mechanic.

Pve wise, they definitely need some love, but I'm not quite sure why there are some people complaining that...they have to use a core profession mechanic? Maybe I am interpreting this incorrectly - I found DE in pve to be utterly, mindnumbingly boring before. Now it's kinda mildly more interesting because I'm rewarded more for making good use of stealth, but you certainly don't see me complaining that I have to use shade skills for scourge to be effective, shroud for a reaper/core necro, or that playing a class involves...playing that class.

ANet could also stand to sprinkle some more stealth access around tbh. I run dp/rifle in all game modes, but I feel bad for those who wanted to move away from rifle, stealth utilities (could of the stealth utilities could maybe do with some fenangling - lower cooldown, lower stealth duration, yadday adda), etc. There definitely is a difference between being able to easily access stealth and not doing so, and just having to sacrifice far too much to get stealth (say...a sword/SB setup or something)

Completely flawed implementation that just increased the needless busywork on a class that already struggled to survive in game that already has an emphasis on way too much busywork. Complexity =/= depth.

No I'm not going to get into all the specific button mashing rotation BS that for some reason seems to equate to skill for people in this game, because it might as well just be a macro doing all the hard work at this point and games aren't supposed to be busywork. Here's the net effect and result of this change.

Before, the Deadeye buffs gave it extremely good, easy to access DPS that made it fairly high tier in terms of accessibility and ease of usage. This was offset by the fact the class is extremely vulnerable to damage being a thief and so needed to make use of range and immobility in order to maintain higher health.

This change negates all that. It's just another "busywork" class that needs to go through leaps and bounds in order to do the damage of before, all while trying to stay alive on top of that when considering aggro mechanics and other gameplay effects (Because a game is more than just a number, in this case DPS.)

The biggest flaw of this recent change was forcing Death's Judgement into a stealth attack. While it makes sense in theory, in order to attain the DPS of before it requires further arbitrary manipulation of balance effects in order to do damage. What compounds that access to stealth in PVE is extremely limited (by contrast) and requires again, even more arbitrary busywork just to maintain high damage. Chaining combos for stealth or the internal cooldown of Kneel's stealth effect makes it twice as hard to manipulate stealth easily.

On top of that, in order to do said damage, one has to keep GIVE UP ENDURANCE/DODGING which wastes not only the weak survivability of the class to begin with, but also is another arbitrary measure a player has to perform in order to do damage. It's literally busywork. It makes no sense. Yes, the kneeling for permanent stealth in WvW/PvP might have been far more broken, but now it just severely impacts PVE's flexibility and flavor. Kneeling before for stealth made sense. Rolling into stealth does not.

I am honestly blown away at the fact that Deadeye out of all classes decided to get a rework and change when there are tons of other issues with other classes plagued by even more complex and arbitrary nonsense. Deadeye's gone from a straightforward, single target DPS class that had to focus on staying alive in order to do damage into another do some additional arbitrary flipping and balancing of internal cooldowns in order to actually be worth something.

Key points and issues. Dodging into stealth is arbitrary and is for all intents and purposes now a seemingly required action in order to trigger Death's Judgement. Put stealth back into Kneel, at the very least for PVE. Removal of Cursed Bullet just makes Deadeye's Rifle even more limited than before with even less capability. Instead of having a tool for boon removal it's instead become an even more linear damage weapon with no utility. This is combined with the push to slot stealth skills now, FURTHER reducing the overall utility of the Rifle by dedicating it to nothing but just trying to get Death's Judgement out the door.

In other words, accessing Death's Judgement is the biggest thing that makes Deadeye absolutely frustrating to play.

Bigger overarching issues: Access to stealth is a pain in PVE (compared to PVP where even a scant few seconds will give you a larger net effect than AI), especially when using the rifle. In its current iteration, the Deadeye class is now a dedicated stealth class that requires access to stealth but has almost no access or traits that affect or gain stealth in any reasonable manner. EVEN WORSE is that activating stealth by dodging instead of the delay with the original kneel means that any projectile that's currently traveling will instantly deactivate your stealth and ruin your ICD manipulation. The one damage Utility Shadow Orb will now remove that stealth instantly interrupt your Death's Judgement activation as well, resulting in much lower DPS and again, requiring even more frustrating manipulation of damage. It now actively conflicts with its own skills.

Whereas Deadeye's earlier implementation was sensible and logical if simple, the current one is needlessly (yes, needlessly) complex by requiring manipulation of nonsense mechanics (endurance for stealth instead of initiative like before on top of an ICD), on top of working with the flaws of Stealth (Immediate unstealth when dealing any damage meaning it is extremely easy to interrupt Death's Judgement) in order to do the DPS it previously did.

All in all, the class plays like taking 9 year expired Quaaludes by contrast in order to achieve what it wants to achieve. It's less about marking a target and destroying them now, and instead it's about wasting the precious stealth attacks that for a rifle are impossible to get. In other words, this new implementation of getting Death's Judgement is just roundabout nonsense that's a pain to perform and completely unfun.

@Curennos.9307 said:
Can we give backstab and DJ the Blurred Frenzy treatment and buff the hell out of those two skills in pve? It'd be a nice dps boost and an easy split. Then fix the irritating thing with the stealth on dodge and see where we're at then?

I get that some people really liked the previous incarnation of Malice - I liked how the dmg increase applied to all my attacks, too. But let's be honest, the whole 'stalking' thing was horribly unfun to play against. YOU may have fun marking someone, then waiting for malice to build or w/e, then smashing your opponent, but it's an awful pvp mechanic.

Pve wise, they definitely need some love, but I'm not quite sure why there are some people complaining that...they have to use a core profession mechanic? Maybe I am interpreting this incorrectly - I found DE in pve to be utterly, mindnumbingly boring before. Now it's kinda mildly more interesting because I'm rewarded more for making good use of stealth, but you certainly don't see me complaining that I have to use shade skills for scourge to be effective, shroud for a reaper/core necro, or that playing a class involves...playing that class.

ANet could also stand to sprinkle some more stealth access around tbh. I run dp/rifle in all game modes, but I feel bad for those who wanted to move away from rifle, stealth utilities (could of the stealth utilities could maybe do with some fenangling - lower cooldown, lower stealth duration, yadday adda), etc. There definitely is a difference between being able to easily access stealth and not doing so, and just having to sacrifice far too much to get stealth (say...a sword/SB setup or something)

I understand your viewpoint but, killing an entire mechanic just to fix one build that could have been easily fixed in another manner without breaking the Malice system to the point it only benefits a select few who are willing to conform to that style of play is ludicrous. Also it's not just some of the players it's a good majority of the Deadeye player base. Or if anything the ones who love and understand the rifle, which again is the majority of the Deadeye player base.

@Specialka.7290 said:
Lots of bad players around here honestly. You can't check how many malice you have and care for your surroundings? Is this your first mmo?

They just need to tweak the roll to reliably get stealth out of it, make that malice build on yourself and not your target so you can switch target easily or if the target dies too quickly(since they copy pasted the rogue from Wow, they could have fullt done it), and maybe tweak a little the damage for rifle since it seems to lack a little.

Obviously, the new malice system is far better than the previous one which was boring and bland.

Oh look the typical "Get Gud" Poster. Sir I'll have you know my experience in this game probably and most certainly out shines yours, with over 6000 hours of game time and having been here since the beginning of the game, I am in no way a noob. Here's a question for you, have you tried it yet? Have you actually done testing with this?

And No the new Malice system is not better to the old one, This one takes focus off the Deadeye profession and the Signature Rifle itself, and puts Focus on the Thiefs Core Stealth Attacks more than the actual Rifle. A player who does not use Stealth in there build is now being forced to take Stealth if he/she wants to be efficient in any capacity. From a customizable game play stand and this is unacceptable. The old system allowed the Player using the Deadeye to put more focus and effort into his target, and not have to worry about stacking yet another energy bar that they have to manage besides the one they already have Initiative. And now with them making Dodge a Stealth Proc, they've effectively turned it into another required energy source to be effective due to how the new Malice works.

But you are probably the kind of Deadeye who doesn't use Rifle right? The Pistol kind who is absolute loving the new changes cause they don't even affect you at all.

Hours played =/= skill. Wrong argument, mate.

And all your BS < gameplay

You assume that after over 6000 hours I wouldnt be proficient in the professions I play? I have over 20 characters between this account and my main account. Every Elite Spec unlocked all characters atleast geared with Exotic or better gear. I've built two legendarys granted thats not a whole In comparison to other players but its still something. If you want me to prove myself then I will gladly oblige, I'll even let you set the terms to be friendly.

Regardless my position still stands on the Deadeye and then Malice system, I played Deadeye often since the start of Path of Fire and enjoyed it long before they recieved the damage increases. This change just screams under tested and poorly implemented, made to solve the minor problem of one build...

I assume nothing because I do not care about you. Just that hours played is not skill. So use another argument plz.

I did use another arguement besides hours played in my previous response, I even expanded upon it in my last post, If thats not good enough then I'm all ears to a way I can prove I'm skillful. But this is the last I will argue this, we're getting too off topic and thats how forum conversations like these devolve into maddness and get closed. Lets return the the actual problem and not criticize others skill levels.

Your "actual problem" seems to be just a bunch of opinions colliding.

The actual problem as it stands is Silent Scope's auto-reveal from mid-air projectiles, as well as heal-skills giving malice allowing insane minimal-counterplay backstabs. That's a problem whether you like or dislike the rework of the DE. Everything else is one person's opinion vs. another person's opinion - not problems.

I'd argue that THE actual problem is that Anet feels it's perfectly fine to just remove parts of their game and replace them on the grounds of "we feel like it". They did this with Guardian Spirit weapons, they did this with Mesmer Phantasms and now they're doing it with Deadeye Malice play-style. Not saying that Anet have no power to change the aspects of their own game, because they have all the power to do so. HOWEVER, to retain good relations with players, the best approach is to make such drastic changes only when absolutely necessary and after exhausting several other options.

When you set the precedence of change-on-a-whim, no test servers, a mentality to never take feedback into consideration (name the amount of changes that were rolled back or diverted because of player feedback), you set an atmosphere that can be destructive for your product.

Regardless of if something turns out to be a buff or not, many players don't care about min/max buffs but mostly about aesthetics and "feeling" (take a look at politics and you'll understand that). The ultimate and best solution is to do as much to keep the feel, style and use of the game the same and being creative about how you implement change, in the current and the future. This requires forethought, planning and cooperation (TEST SERVER!).

@Vulcaruss.9567 said:
The previous Maice system was beneficial to all Deadeyes regardless of preference in play style, weapon, trait setup skill load out and armor stats. It was in general a more effective system on the broader spectrum and not just for stealth users.

I hate to be "that person" but that's not entirely true. DE Condi builds, while rare, existed and pretty much didn't benefit from Malie at all. The only condi skill that got better was Binding Shadows as the duration of the applied poison increased per stack of Malice. But that skill was hardly relevant anyway bc the immobilize it caused changed into knockdown on a marked target which, is actually counter-productive due to Panic strike.
So yeah, Malice was pretty much useless for pure Condi DEs. Ofc it still is now, unless you play P/P condi maybe but at least now you get more ini through M7 and then you can dump the Malice.

So what it basically comes down to for Condi DEs is that we traded the Stolen AoE Condi Nuke for a better Ini regen.

@Vulcaruss.9567 said:
The previous Maice system was beneficial to all Deadeyes regardless of preference in play style, weapon, trait setup skill load out and armor stats. It was in general a more effective system on the broader spectrum and not just for stealth users.

I hate to be "that person" but that's not entirely true. DE Condi builds, while rare, existed and pretty much didn't benefit from Malie at all. The only condi skill that got better was Binding Shadows as the duration of the applied poison increased per stack of Malice. But that skill was hardly relevant anyway bc the immobilize it caused changed into knockdown on a marked target which, is actually counter-productive due to Panic strike.
So yeah, Malice was pretty much useless for pure Condi DEs. Ofc it still is now, unless you play P/P condi maybe but at least now you get more ini through M7 and then you can dump the Malice.

So what it basically comes down to for Condi DEs is that we traded the Stolen AoE Condi Nuke for a better Ini regen.

Deadeye was never really built for Condition damage too heavily anyway. But that could of been easily solved too by making higher Malice increase condition damage or maybe condition duration with the old system. Still Conditions aside, the old Malice system benefitted and reached more Deadeyes than the way things are now.

@Curennos.9307 said:
Can we give backstab and DJ the Blurred Frenzy treatment and buff the hell out of those two skills in pve? It'd be a nice dps boost and an easy split. Then fix the irritating thing with the stealth on dodge and see where we're at then?

I get that some people really liked the previous incarnation of Malice - I liked how the dmg increase applied to all my attacks, too. But let's be honest, the whole 'stalking' thing was horribly unfun to play against. YOU may have fun marking someone, then waiting for malice to build or w/e, then smashing your opponent, but it's an awful pvp mechanic.

Pve wise, they definitely need some love, but I'm not quite sure why there are some people complaining that...they have to use a core profession mechanic? Maybe I am interpreting this incorrectly - I found DE in pve to be utterly, mindnumbingly boring before. Now it's kinda mildly more interesting because I'm rewarded more for making good use of stealth, but you certainly don't see me complaining that I have to use shade skills for scourge to be effective, shroud for a reaper/core necro, or that playing a class involves...playing that class.

ANet could also stand to sprinkle some more stealth access around tbh. I run dp/rifle in all game modes, but I feel bad for those who wanted to move away from rifle, stealth utilities (could of the stealth utilities could maybe do with some fenangling - lower cooldown, lower stealth duration, yadday adda), etc. There definitely is a difference between being able to easily access stealth and not doing so, and just having to sacrifice far too much to get stealth (say...a sword/SB setup or something)

I understand your viewpoint but, killing an entire mechanic just to fix one build that could have been easily fixed in another manner without breaking the Malice system to the point it only benefits a select few who are willing to conform to that style of play is ludicrous. Also it's not just some of the players it's a good majority of the Deadeye player base. Or if anything the ones who love and understand the rifle, which again is the majority of the Deadeye player base.

I wouldn't presume to guess the statistics of the change. All the teefs I know have been loving the changes. That certainly doesn't mean that others who have groups of friends/guilds with teefs hating the change are invalid, but...their exp doesn't invalidate mine, and vice versa. Rifle seems fine...d/p seems fine. Again, I won't deny that other setups could use a little help with stealth, but they also have things that the builds that -do- have easy access to stealth don't. Sword setups have amazing evades and a gapcloser/immob/condi cleanse. Sword dagger with SB can still blast the smoke field with SB2. They could just expand the new sniper's cover to be stealth when dodge rolling on any weapon? And reset the CD when you use your #5 key. Something like that.

Claiming that the malice system is 'broken' and 'people who really understand and love the rifle agree with me' is...some logical fallacy I can't be bothered to look up the name of. I found the previous malice system benefitted all builds (except condi ,but y'know) but was -boring- to all setups except rifle. You just got a flat dmg increase across all skills that ramped up. I like this new one better, where each setup has a different benefit. Backstab vs DJ vs sword endurance regen, etc.

Maybe consume malice on any attack and gain the stealth skill bonuses if you strike a target from behind to help the builds who don't or can't get stealth? shrug So sword setups could try and get behind an immobed target for their. pistol whip and get endurance back.

Leo G is correct when it comes to "feeling." Gamefeel is EXTREMELY important for all games, MMORPG or not, Action Game or not, RTS or not.

Deadeye made sense before: You dodged to dodge, and you had to save it because you were immobilized otherwise. While GW2 wasn't meant for immobile gameplay, it has a lot of arbitrary things that benefit you moving than not moving. HOWEVER, in its current form Deadeye is forced to dodge to get stealth, but said stealth is easily interrupted by any other source of damage, is difficult to get, and spends not only an ICD for kneel-dodge stealth but ENDURANCE as well.

You shouldn't need to bloody dodge into stealth. That sounds like it should be a straight passive trait option for the stealth line. On top of that, Kneel SHOULD provide stealth by default. The original Kneel interrupted your actions and activated stealth AFTER the animation was complete, giving it time for any other damage sources to be avoided (a brief window) that allowed you to use your one decent utility on Deadeye's Rifle: Cursed Bullet. Even before however, Cursed Bullet was subject to the SAME PAINS that Death's Judgement is now facing.

It's literally just an arbitrary mess of poor gameplay right now, and it IS bad. Deadeye should be a SIMPLE class to play, but be high risk and reward due to the sacrifice of mobility for a class that already has the lowest effective health in the game with no ways to mitigate it like Elementalist's strengths in sheer, raw utility.